The
coarseness of the Georgian era in Britain contrasts with the strait-lacedness
of the Victorian era which followed it. Great poverty and suffering contrasted
with great wealth; drunkenness and debauchery were commonplace among all ranks
of society. In the engravings of Hogarth, Gillray and Rowlandson we can see
this clearly. There is one in particular – Morning by Hogarth shows an
early morning scene in Covent Garden. There is a brawl in a coffee-house, the
destitute homeless scavenging discarded vegetables, beggars, respectable
citizens on their way to church, and prostitutes with their clients.
Prostitution was very widespread and shamelessly practised in Georgian London.
The morality of the time allowed women no other status than virgin, wife or
whore. Once a girl had been "ruined" (often by rape) there were very
few other ways she could make a living than by selling her body, and there were
very many who stood to benefit by taking their cut of her earnings; so much so
that the entrapment of young girls was an important part of their profession.

For the
clients, there was a very wide choice; from high-class girls in their own
houses to wretched street-walkers ready to perform in an alleyway for sixpence.
Turnover was high; drink, imprisonment and venereal diseases took a rapid toll.
Hogarth's Moll Hackabout was entrapped into prostitution at seventeen and was
dead of syphilis at twenty-four. Every year there would be the arrival of new
faces and the departure of old ones. There was thus a gap in the market for a
guidebook for the use of clients, and Harris's List first appeared in 1756 and
was published yearly until 1795, when it was suppressed by the authorities.
Pocket size, and costing half a crown, it sold about 8,000 copies of each
edition and at first listed upwards of a hundred and fifty women at different
levels and prices. Later editions tended more towards the upper end of the market:
price half a guinea and upwards.